Is it not interesting that many people know what they want in life but only speak about what they do not want. Every so often I meet students who tell me how they do not want to fail their examinations or other people who keep talking about how they dislike poverty, how they do not want to die as bachelors, how they do not want to fall sick, how they do not want to be left behind in this or that and so on and so forth. No one is talking about what they want!
Life does not give you what you want; it gives you what you demand. You demand by taking deliberate action fine-tuned towards delivery of the desired results and not by holding placards and demonstrating on the streets. Every action begins with a thought. When you accumulate similar thoughts about something, desire to achieve it, is created and action happens to fulfill the desire. Therefore what you feed your mind constantly, becomes.
It is as though our mind works based on concepts being processed. If you focus on winning, you win; however, if you focus on not losing, you end up losing in most cases. Whether you focus on losing or not losing, you are still focusing on the concept of losing. Once the concept crowds your mind, it spills over to the outside world in form of action. This is why I have an issue when people keep talking about what they do not want instead of what they want. The concept that crowds their minds is of that which they do not want. The same ends up happening in their physical world.
They say words are never innocent; what you confess is what you possess. Words give life, words take life; words bless, words curse. What is hard in saying, “I want to pass my exams” as opposed to “I don’t want to fail in my exams”? The first option makes you focus on what you want to achieve; you lose sight of any other obstruction until you hit your goal. The second option is non-committal; it does not inject direction and focus in the process. It encourages laziness and mediocrity since it defines the minimum objective and not the ultimate one. It reduces people into ‘at least people’; people who often say, ‘at least I tried.’
People, who constantly define what they do not want, often lack the motivation to push for what they want. In most cases, they appear not to know what they want and are often met with what they do not want. Life rewards you proportionate to the effort you invest in a process. Talking about what you do not want generates very little effort towards what you want and leads to failure due to minimal reward.
Instead of spending time talking about how you do not want to be sick, just express your desire to be healthy. To understand something, you must focus on it and not on what you do not want. You do not understand wealth by studying poverty; neither do you get food abundance by analyzing hunger. It is time to train your tongue to speak positivity in life; to speak about what you want and not what you do not want. If you do not want coffee, there are many other options; however, if you want tea, it becomes specific and you look for tea. If you went to a shop and gave the shopkeeper a list of things you do not want to buy, the best he can do is to stare at you. Know what you want, name it and go for it! With clarity of objective, YOU CAN DO BETTER!
Roy Okonji
Personal Development Coach, Motivational Speaker and Author
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